The message is intended to be firm and unequivocal. This Wednesday, July 31, immediately after the Israeli attack in Tehran that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened Israel with “severe punishment.” Before insisting: “It is our duty to avenge the blood (of Haniyeh) shed on (Iranian) territory.”
This promise of response to this Israeli attack in the heart of the Iranian capital has already begun to be discussed in Iran. According to The New York Timesan emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council was held this Wednesday morning in Tehran. According to three Iranian officials, including two members of the Revolutionary Guards, the supreme leader gave the order to Iran to strike Israel directly in retaliation.
“In the right place at the right time”
AFP, for its part, claims that another meeting was also held this Wednesday in Tehran, between Iranian officials and representatives of the formations allied to them in the region. The objective: to coordinate their position against Israel, according to a source close to the Lebanese Hezbollah informed of this meeting who requested anonymity. “Two scenarios were discussed, a simultaneous response from Iran and its allies or a staggered response from each party,” added this source.
On the mullahs’ regime’s side, a recent precedent may suggest its possible response. After a strike against the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, attributed to Israel, Iran launched an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israeli territory about ten days later. But it took care to warn the United States before this response, mainly through the Swiss embassy in Tehran. Most of the Iranian projectiles were then intercepted, with the help of the United States and other countries.
Tehran’s response is likely to be a notch higher this time, as Israel has struck directly at the heart of the Iranian capital, a snub. “We will certainly implement the order of the supreme leader,” “in the right place and at the right time,” insisted the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, on Thursday, during the funeral of Ismail Haniyeh.
“Inevitable response,” says Hezbollah
But Iran’s other allies in the region could also play a key role in Tehran’s desire for revenge. The head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said on Thursday that Israel should expect an “inevitable response” from his powerful group after the assassination of its military leader Fouad Shokr on Tuesday near Beirut, but also after the strike against the leader of Palestinian Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh. “Israel does not know what red lines it has crossed,” the head of the pro-Iranian movement said in a televised speech broadcast live.
Hamas, too, has vowed to avenge its leader’s death. The Palestinians “will pursue Israel until it is uprooted from the land of Palestine,” warned a leader of the Islamist movement, Khalil al-Hayya, at Haniyeh’s funeral on Thursday in Tehran. A response that can only be all the more motivated by the Israeli army’s announcement on Thursday of the “elimination” of the head of Hamas’ armed wing, Mohammed Deif, in a strike on July 13 in the Gaza Strip.
In Iraq, a leader of the Islamic Resistance, a nebulous group of pro-Iranian Iraqi movements, told AFP that the most likely option would be “for Iran to launch, with formations from Iraq, Yemen and Syria, a response against Israeli military targets.” According to this official who requested anonymity, “Hezbollah could then strike civilian targets,” in response to the strike targeting its military leader in which five civilians were also killed.
Scenarios that Israel seems to be preparing for in any case. Benjamin Netanyahu indicated this Thursday that Israel was at a “very high level” of preparations for any scenario, “both defensive and offensive,” according to a statement from his office. “We will make people pay a very high price for any act of aggression against us,” the Israeli Prime Minister also insisted. Foreshadowing a possible escalation in the Middle East that worries the highest levels in Washington, Israel’s staunch ally, but also throughout the world.